yobech505

In Touch.

            I should make it as clear as an open window, I am not seeking a mate. 

            This is not to be mistakenly taken as I would not like to have one.  Of course I would.  Yes, I am comfortable being alone, but there are times when I want to turn to the person beside me and say “isn’t this groovy?”. Or “what a beautiful view.” Something along those lines.  The dog doesn’t get it,  even if it could see that far.  The kids are beginning to catch the inspiration as they grow older, but they’re moving on in a few years.  So, I wouldn’t mind some company

            Why?  Why would I want to be with someone who has their own issues, their own problems, their own concerns?  Why would I want to hear all about what happened to someone else? 

            I can’t speak for others.  But I like listening to partners, especially if they’re someone special  It’s called ‘caring about’, and that’s someone you listen to.  Here is a person you want to share with, help, and listening is a good thing, a learning experience that many of us are unable to do very well.  Everyone should learn how to listen.  You’d be enthralled with the information you get, which you can use when times demand you know enough to get through uncertainty.

            I wouldn’t mind listening. 

            I’ve had to learn how to listen and in the process, have made numerous mistakes in relationships because it is a recently acquired skill.  The best part of learning is that I am really enjoying it.  Insights abound.  New portals to the minds of those I care for is helping me to understand the why’s of the things that happen.  Not that I am always processing the long term effects of what they are saying, but it does allow me to understand it a little better when I finally get past the dermis of their brain set.

            Turn to  me and tell me you have something to say.  Tell me what to do with the words you are assembling  and presenting so that I can share your thoughts, your heart.  Let me say I don’t understand then tell me in a different way so I do. 

            I could talk to myself, but that would be considered weird by some.

            I would really like it if you were a coffee drinker, but you don’t have to be.

            Serenity and quiet are a plus.

            I’m not into religions, but having a God is okay.

            You need to care about yourself, physically, mentally, emotionally, with self-confidence and a level of personal self worth.

            Don’t be afraid of the dark

            Don’t be afraid to talk.   Let me listen.

 Breakups at 13

            After a recent break up, the heart finds its own way to mend.  It gets a little better every day and soon, it will all be assigned to another file somewhere in the memory.  Hurt subsides, and we get time to reflect.  It’s always good to know things will eventually be okay.

            Now, how does one deal with the break up of a first love?  Not mine, but my son’s.   13 is not an age to get overly concerned about, as the minds are young and still influence able, but it is still okay for a father to care. 

            They were a cute couple and the relationship was probably more of an experiment rather that a serious attempt to be a duo.  First year teens do not have a lot of experience in this area so the whole thing was a learning adventure, something that probably is not a bad idea.

            ‘Going out’ is what the term is now.  (We went ‘steady’ back when I started.)  It never gets too serious.  The ‘dates’ are usually in company, to public places and during the day.   They would hang out at school and during rehearsals or music practice, and would be talking on the phone or texting  when not together.  But they were still ‘going out’. 

            Until she broke up with him. Over the phone.

            Young hearts still hurt.  He was miserable, sad and a bit depressed.  A parent hates to see their child that way and I knew there wasn’t a lot I could do to cheer him up, even though I tried.  I gave fatherly advice he didn’t really want to listen to, told him about other fishes, and just sat next to him for a while. He already knew about my recent breakup.

            He has to go through it, deal with it and overcome the pain.  He’s a tough kid.  He’ll do fine, of that I have no inklings of unsure.

            I hear from those I tell, many different approaches.  Some question why I let him ‘date’ to begin with.  I hear it within every crowd when the conversations start.  But I disagree.

            First of all, to call it dating is a bit of a misuse of the vocabulary.  They’re rarely, if ever, alone.  Chaperones are nearby if it isn’t public, and  it’s just not a big deal.  In fact it might be a good thing. 

            It is never to soon to begin to teach our young ones about life.  Breakups are a natural part of it, and experience is always positive, although it may not seem like it to the breakupee at the time.  That it creates wariness, not so much.  But that it teaches that people change, are different and grow in other directions is probably a more appropriate lesson. 

            A self created sermon can alleviate a little of the pain, and to do that, my son will have to look at the direction his heart took, and understand that the course may have peril.  It may not make the pain less if or when it happens again, but it will give him the understanding that these things happen.

            So he won’t be a stalker, he won’t be obsessed and he knows that eventually he’ll get over it.  Not a bad lesson.

Birthdays

Made up word for the day:  thamding: adj. adv. Noun:  tham’ dingh.  Means nothing.  Irrelevant.  Not part of anything important

A dilemma that likes to pull itself up a chair right in front of us is the birthday thing.  The “oh crap, we’re not together anymore but what do I do about the birthday” situation. Not as difficult if you have yet to buy a gift but still, it begs for some kind of a reply.

A lot of it has to do with the way the relationship ended.  You might treat an ex wife or the mother of your children differently than you would a short term lover.  It might also be directly in synch with the intensity of the relationship and how you squished the connection.

Nasty?  You’re not getting a thamding.  No call, no card, no nothing.  If the memory could be erased from the mind, it would be.  The date on the calendar, written down in ink, is now a big blob of  even darker ink, probably permanent marker. Unfortunate that it has to stay until you can tear that page off.  It makes a rather ugly reminder, especially if the calendar is usually orderly and neat.

Amicable.  What is amicable anyway?  What do you like about them?  They’re gone.  You broke up.  Just because you don’t sob like a screen roof in the rain when your paths cross doesn’t mean it’s been great.  Do you talk on the phone because you both work for the same company or one of you is a vendor?  This one is easy.  When you do talk, just say, “Oh, by the way, happy birthday.”  The response will be as simple as “Thank you”, or “You remembered”.  Then it’s over.  You’re done.

If it was a sad (read; one sided) severing, you may feel you need to do something special.  You want to kick up an impression that will do one of two things; bring out a good memory or instill a feeling of regret on their part for letting the best thing that ever happened to them go.  This is called the revenge birthday and can be very expensive.  You end up buying the gift that is a constant reminder of you and is something they really want.  It is also a complete waste of money and time as it will not change what is.

A lot of this, as well, depends on how close to the birthday the break up was.  Six months is good because you can pretty much let everything go.  A month or two can be a little bit of a concern.  The bad one is the birthday that falls within a month of the end of your relationship’s demise.  What do you do?

Flowers are out!    Here, the guilt gift in good.  “I bought this for you back three months ago and figured what the hell, I might as well give it to you.”  This can be very satisfying because it makes you believe that you’re getting the upper hand on this, you’re in control.   Naw.  You’re just considered a dumb ass for not taking it back to the store and they’re going to enjoy whatever it is with their next partner.

Why go through all of this?    I have a better idea

Write something nice, heartfelt, from inside.  Keep it simple and uncomplicated, and perhaps to the point.  Make it up beat, a happy note that would say, “Hey, I’m doing okay. I hope you are as well.”  Nothing fancy.

But definitely sincere.  If you really feel it, good, if not, you have to sound like you mean it.  But be careful.  Some people can read between the lines.

#30

My Confidant

Indulged relationships, those that we tend to really get into, have a side that some might call dark, but others would call expected.  That is the role of each person to the other as a confidant.

To some, it is essential at the beginning.  To others, it has to be maintained.  And, it an honest way, it is a complete trust you give someone else.

Now they know all about you.  If they don’t, they do share fears, concerns and inner workings. It is probably mutual too.

Not being in a relationship right now, I miss that sharing part of it.  I was at a point, in my last duo experience, where I enjoyed telling her what was going on in my mind, often going into my soul and uploading information into her hard drive.  No passwords, no firewalls.  She knew whatever she wanted to know and probably a lot of manure she didn’t.

A confidant is good because they want to hear what you have to say.  Or, at least they pretend they do.  They also give advice, point a direction or make you a cup of coffee.

It is kind of cool that they also take this information, try to unscramble it for you, then send it back, whether it be via e-mail, text, blog or actual live conversation.  With their opinion attached, of course.

But that is why you give them the data in the first place.

If you could figure it out on your own, you wouldn’t need them.  You could talk to yourself and the people around you could gossip about your lunacy or that you were using some type of invisible hands free earphones.

There are probably people who do that.

I just liked having a confidant.  I liked having someone to ramble at.  I could shout, cry, whine, complain and just be a general pain in the tucas. My confidant would listen, inject a word or two, then critique my situation, circumstances or the person I was confiding about.  All in confidence.

So when things go ‘south’, when the physical relationship ends, what do we end up pondering about?  She knows so much about me.  My inner secrets are not just exposed but permanent markered all over my wall.

I can’t undo it.  There is no recall button, no escape key.  Even if there was, this would be one of those situations where the key wouldn’t work anyway.

It’s out there.  She has it.  And she can do whatever she wants with it.

I suppose if we hated each other it would be a legitimate concern.  But, even then, it probably wouldn’t.  Where’s the benefit in it?  If you were a person bent on revenge then it might be beneficial, but I think most people would suppress it naturally.

When I opened my soul, I did it without expectation.  And honestly, she can do what she wishes with it.  I could be ashamed if there were anything to be ashamed about, but there isn’t.  I could be afraid, but I’m not.  I could worry but why?  It’s all out there.  The ice cream already dropped from the cone to the ground.

Besides, there is nothing anyone needs to know right now.  If they do, I will tell them myself.  Or she can, if she wants to.

The combined knowledge of those few confidants in my life could be life changing I suppose.  But love is funny. Once it has been there, it puts access blockers into place.  I would have to think extremely hard to bring up all that she told me about herself.  I would have to embellish the real with what I think my audience wants to hear.  I don’t do that very well, so why bother.

Just Wandering

Finding out where you belong can take up a lot of perfectly good worry that you could use somewhere else.  That is, of course, until you actually find it.  Still, you do waste so much ridiculous effort trying to discover the inner self that the search goes from just something to exhausting.

So, why do we worry about it as we enter the quest?  Perhaps it is the old adage about the journey.  Do we really need the journey?  Is it so essential that without it the end result does not have the impact that our life needs for growth?  Why does this journey have to be so damn ornery?

Journeys can be good things.  I’ve had some wonderful ones.  You get to see stuff you would never see, experience things you would never experience, otherwise.  You know, crappy stuff; heartbreak, loneliness, stress.  All for the sake of the journey.

Then there’s the upside.  You meet people who make you happy.  And who doesn’t like being happy?  You get to be intimate, share, love, all the things that make the journey fun, interesting and adventurous.

You get to trip and fall, slide, get scratched, dropped on your head and singed a time or three.  You lose, win, tie, forget a date, buy the wrong gift and get a smile to start your day.  Then you have to sort it all out and decide what to keep and what to send to the recycler, what can be recycled and what just needs to get dumped.

A journey must begin with a journey to decide what your journey will be.  This is usually the part where you’re all over the place, directionless, lost and without even the smallest micro idea of where you want to go.  Look.  Don’t look.  Let it come to you.  Just let it happen.  You need to make it happen.  Search your soul.  Get help.  Oh no!  Now what do I do?

Once you put these minor annoying bytes of brain RAM in some type of order, you can begin.

A question will arise.  “What do I do with the dog while I’m on this journey?”  This is only a concern if you actually have a dog.  You may have a cat in which case it is not applicable.  If you have both, it can be rather cumbersome but not beyond some kind of insurmountable. You could also take them with you.

Paying for the journey can be an appropriate concern.  What will it cost?  Where will I acquire the resources that the voyage demands?  Who can I talk to when things end up falling off the curb?

Good thoughts, good questions and no answers.  It’s what happens when you indulge in the journey.  It’s what comes up as you go.  Yes, the final destination, where you end up after all of this, is nice to envision, but the true value is in the learning that is implied, which you are supposed to get as you proceed.

Alas!  You made it.

Then you get to begin the next journey.

Page 16:  My confidant.

She

            She showed up one night and left an impact that still affects the way I implement the chapters of my life.  I am close to the point where it will be one of those memories that makes me smile when I reflect.

Watermarks

            I am never surprised when the world hands me a new baton, or sends me in a new direction. After all, there are so many directions I have yet to go. Some start out scary, some are uncomfortable at first, others just flow, there’s little or no apprehension. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I’ll take some of those directions. I have good friends, enjoyed a great relationship, and want to live life to the fullest. No need to fret.

Past Wives

            Wow! Somebody probably should not have shared those posts with me. I never realized what a rather unpleasant person a few others perceive me to be. Actions my friends, actions. Everyone has an opinion and an interpretation, but don’t formulate opinion on the word of others. Decide for yourself.

Internet Words

            Writing is often a good way to vent. What is put onto a page is often more of an emotional outburst than a personal attack. It releases anger or hurt inside. When I read something negative, especially directed towards me, I take it with a few shakes of salt. Besides, if it isn’t true, or iis distorted, why fret it? Then I try to remember the good times that life allowed us to have.

Gossip

            Sometimes emotions talk and not common sense. People dwell on the negative and forget the upbeat times life includes. Writing lets people vent. I do it. I’m not going to dwell on it and there is certainly no animosity on my part. There is, however, curiosity. We grow.

Metabolism

            Chemical reactions and caustic highlights, the heart seeks its own healing, and loses itself in the chain reaction of two elements that seem to interact, positive at first, then fading, lost to the laws of physics that don’t apply here.

End Write

            Gone like the Tasmanian Tiger, an extinct relationship has only pictures, and stories told by the elders that take up housekeeping inside the brain.  It recalls what the inner world of the heart was like, but can never be again, and wonders what would happen if the species had survived.  But it doesn’t stay there.  It looks for another rare occurrence, and will work to save that, using the knowledge of the tiger so it survives.

Movin’ On

            Rough times, tough times, times to reflect, to hurt, to cry, to wonder why. Love, sharing, caring, delving deep into another person’s soul, capturing their heart, their mind, weaknesses and strengths, all usually parallel the uncomfortable, undesirable, the hurtful, even the dangerous, making all of this a part of relationships.

            It may not be one person who has dropped into our collection of days, weeks, months or years and ensconced  our emotional education, although it could be. It is usually a little bit from one, something else from another, and pieces of who knows what from still others.

            Learning, growing, becoming something other than what we were, better, we hope, stronger. Wiser

            We don’t let up.  We step along, moving towards what we hope is best, oblivious to the way it may turn out but with an unrealistic approach to how it probably will turn out.  Our minds distort the natural and the defenses are overcome in us when we close our eyes and put our passion into a kiss.

            It is the subconscious that tells us to be alert, be aware, be prepared, but passion is so much stronger than this inner character that hides in our hearts and eludes common sense in the head.  We go forward, oblivious to what the inner part of us says, unable and unwilling to hear it.

            It is what makes us homo-sapiens, different than Fido the dog and Fluffy the cat.  As humans, we feel love, we feel loss, we grieve, become joyous.  Kitty and puppy may as well, but the difference is, we know why, or at least we think we do, we feel that way.

            Overlook.  That is the one word that is probably the most descriptive.  We overlook.  Faults, character traits, personality quirks, habits, we overlook them all.  We ignore the obvious and become immune to the ability to notice flaws, making them strengths, or cute, or even, at the time, desirable.

            And we learn.  We have to.  Destined to repeat is the phrase that comes to mind.  At least that is what we are supposed to do.  Learn, or repeat the errors, minor or gross, of our past.  The really dark glasses are great for watching an eclipse, but for looking at our partner, the person we want to be with, or think we do, they are rose colored as well; distorting, blurry, clouded, misty and sometimes downright blinding.

            We don’t want to take them off.  They stay on our face until love sets in.  By then it is too late to shake the emotion out of our hearts and we put ourselves into ‘exist only’ mode.  There may not be sadness, but there may not be happiness either.  We move along, loving, caring, but not living close to any realm of where we would be in a life of self-professed utopia.

            Human emotion, the vestige of intelligence, the combination of the psyche and the heart,  all of it playing into the relationship part of our lives, is what love is all about.  It has parts, sometimes so many that we lose track of what it was we sought from the people we chose in the first place. 

            Growing is what needs to come out of it all, and it is necessary for moving on.

Dodge the Dodge

Made up word for the day:  avoidination:  verb/adv:  (a  voy  din‘â shun) .  The act of avoiding, staying away from someone or something.  

            I have absolutely no desire to see her.  None.  Not that I would mind seeing her, as it still sends a small pulse of electricity to my heart, causing it to accelerate and ache a little.  It’s when she leaves, of course, that the gobbled up pieces of me end up in the garbage disposal.

            I go out of my way to avoid contact.  I don’t want to see her car, her kids (whom I adore),  the turn off  to her place, none of it.  I make sure I’m driving on the same road she drives on at a time when she has no chance of being there.

            Severed, cut, no connection.  I don’t want her to exist in my life.  I want to pretend she never did.  At least that’s the impression I want the ‘child me’ to have.   The older, but not wiser ‘brat me’ thinks he knows better, is a bully and pushes child me around.  So child me whines, complains and snivels at everything the brat me allows to happen.

            So I beat the hell out of my electro impulses and try to convince them that they are the reason for my problem and it is up to them to forget, which they will not, nay, cannot do.  Brat me loves to tease the hell out of child me, who is really too vulnerable to know better, as thus suffers the self imposed and self felt undulations of yuck.

            It’s a rather awkward way to spend a day, but not beyond the capable brain cells.  As Buddha knows, avoidination of all that she was, or is, or even might have been is a rather unreal attainability.  So it has become unconscious, something I now do without thinking, a reaction brought on without any stimulation, visual, mental or physical.

            It is easily applicable, in this macro second, to see that it puts me in control.  Now I can see her whenever I want to, not when she wants.  Which, of course, is rather on the ignorant side on my part, as she doesn’t care whether she sees me or not.  Oh Yeah!  But it’s the psychological advantage it gives me, as sense of some sort of management over what happened. Delusions of the illusion of power!

            So, it is as plain as the dry spot on the outside of a submarine at 500 feet; it gives me absolutely no authority on the situation itself, but more like imaginary domination of a rapport that she’s been in charge of since the beginning.

            Avoidance maneuvers. The elusive male creature hides so successfully from the female, who in her quest to ‘find herself’, poses about as much threat to him as fly piss does to the Grand Canyon.

            On a final note, It’s not a Dodge, it’s a Chrysler

Page 11

Mahalo

            Not the words you want to hear on a thank you note from a former lover.  Intimacy be damned, she wrote “mahalo”, (‘thank you’ in Hawaiian).  Boy, did the blood pressure rise with that one.   Just a tiny section of an eon ago, she told me “I Love You”, now it’s Mahalo.  I crumpled the note and threw it in the recycle bin.

            What the hell else could she say?  She doesn’t want to lead me on, give me false hope, or lie to me.  And I would have been led on, gotten hope and believed exactly that.  My ‘can be out of control’ mind would have called out, “She still loves me.  There’s a chance!”  She doesn’t and there isn’t.  But really.  Mahalo?

            Yeah.  Reality has been looking for a place to sit..  The truth emblazoned on a rock outside my front door, or exclaimed in a fashion I can comprehend, is, it is done.  Ended,  Kaput, Finis.  Non existent.  She doesn’t love me any more.  Flat out over.

            Not that mahalo is an inappropriate word. It’s actually a very nice word because it is usually said only with sincerity. 

            So Mahalo was her correct choice of vocabulary.

            I just didn’t want to read it.  Not her problem, just an immature outburst on my part.  It hurt, not because she wrote it, but because I didn’t want to hear it.  That’s the damnation of this whole thing.  I am lost in a fantasy world and she is in reality mode.   I dream, she moves on.

            The course my heart follows is under my long term control.  It’s the short term that I seem unable to apply brake pressure to.  It is like trying to put a snail in a frog’s mouth.  The shell is too big and the frog doesn’t like escargot.  It has to be starving and the snail needs to be starved to where it will even fit.  It’ll happen but who knows when.

            So what do I do with the remaining writing I haven’t given her.  I don’t want another note that says ‘mahalo’.  But even if it was months ago, I did write it for her.  She should get it.  I guess.  I can make sure she does without contact.  But what if I do get another note that says ‘mahalo’?

            I’ll just have to have a minor tantrum, curse the note, shout “Mahalo? She wrote Mahalo!”, and crumple the note, toss it at the recycle bin, and probably  miss.  So I will cuss some more, pick the note up, call it stupid and throw it at the recycle bin again. 

            What happened?  Well, my ex gf just sent me a note thanking me for the poems, free verse, sayings I composed and created then put together over a period of about four months, especially for her. She told me that no one had ever done that for her and continued to rave about how much she appreciated it.                                     

            Mahalo?  Seriously?

Pitfalls

Learn from your mistakes!  Adages.  And this one is common.  Preachers, teachers, bosses, parents, authoritarians of all quirks love to tell you this.  We have all heard them, and we all listen, hoping to do just that, learn from our mistakes.

            So why don’t we apply that to our relationships?  Why do we continually connect with the same thing we just got away from?  Then,  when someone that we say we always wanted, comes by, we push it away.  Are we into an unconscious self abuse, martyrdom? 

            For me, it was my step father.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my step father.  He took my mother, brother and me and made us his own.  But his personality and mine clashed.  He was as close to anal retentive as he could be.  I was ADD.  Of course we didn’t know what it was back then.  I was lazy, forgetful, careless, thoughtless was the ‘diagnosis’.

            Anal retentive and ADD cannot be put in the same blender.  At all.  Not even the traits of each of those are compatible.  Guess what I married?  Twice.

My last relationship was not the same as that, however. She wasn’t anal retentive at all.  No trace of ACD either.  But damned if it didn’t collapse on itself.  She said it wasn’t me, which makes me want to analyze it and figure out what is in store for her.

            She would complain as any reminder came up, about her ex, and even the ex before that.  Neither one sounded like a winner.  Narcissistic, dominating, selfish, controlling, all the things I wasn’t.  Yet I threatened her serenity, the things that made her comfortable.  I wasn’t to be more than a memento in a bottom drawer of her future.

            At the time, the best part was that she was not what I had been married to.  I saw a new start, a good one, the possibility of a future without the control, without the dominating inchargeness, without the inability to accept my personality as it was.

It didn’t make it to the plate from the cast iron pan.  The horse we were riding would not make the finish line, instead ending up at the glue factory.

She went back to the way things were before I showed up, but hopefully not back to a third revival of the partners she over involved with.  Simply called out, it is no longer something I should have any connection with.  Nothing I should fret over. I made my play for change in my life and that is all I can push forward from in this era, hoping that when I do connect, it is more like her is some ways, less like her in others.

            I can’t tell what she’s learned.  I would guess one thing and hope it isn’t nothing.  I would say it isn’t my concern anymore, because it isn’t.   But when you cared for someone, it has to be buried in the psyche somewhere.  I’m there, but a small voice inside me, and I can only say this from past brain logs, not professional instruction, points to evidence that she still has a long way to go.